Carlos Sandoval De Leon

September 14 – October 17, 2010

numberthirtyfive is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by New York based artist Carlos Sandoval De Leon. Working within the distance that exists between the creator of an object and its user, it is De Leon’s hope of drawing different dialogues about object and subject. It is in this space that the objects articulate their own deeper meanings through careful staging and juxtapositions.

Very aware of the implications of the materials he uses, De Leon does more than appropriate the symbols within Hip-Hop culture and the urban vernacular. Instead, his aesthetic language draws greatly from the unadorned expanses of minimalism, most directly seen in the two plywood seating units that remind one of Donald Judd’s furniture pieces. He is interested in the way socio-economic contexts can be registered in form, in the way urban and immigrant cultures develop at “ground level” rather than how they are presented in the media. Starting his projects with a good conceptual grasp has allowed De Leon to work across various formats, including performance, sculpture, sound, drawing and photography. And this, in turn, has allowed him to begin a body of work that engages with the politics of living in a globalized society with ever more complex margins.

Unlike so much current art that is to inform, and responds exclusively to, a mediated popular culture, De Leon is more interested in exploring the contexts in which peripheral or immigrant cultures originate and how they function before they are appropriated by the structures of capital.